Six Ways to Improve Your Pinterest Strategy
A solid Pinterest strategy is important when using Pinterest for brand building, ecommerce sales, or any other business purpose. Brands needs to build a large following and make sure their audience stays engaged with quality content.
Pinterest has over 100 million active users. Brands also have a solid presence on Pinterest. The social channel had made many improvements to its ad-targeting platform. Advertisers can now target users based on behaviors, email lists, and engagement. Business accounts benefit from free analytics.
A recent blog post from Pinterest states:
“People on Pinterest tend to spend 2x more than the general public, and with 67% of them using Pinterest to plan for “all things holiday”
- Have a Complete Business Profile
- Increase Your Following and Engage Followers
- Join Group Boards
- Save Pins at High-Traffic Times
- Don’t just post, participate!
- Use Popular Topics on Pinterest
The first step to building a following for a brand is to have a completed Pinterest for business profile. This includes a full description plus a profile image. Try to use the maximum amount of characters in your profiles bio. Think of it as your brand’s elevator pitch adapted to social media. Tell the users in one or two sort sentences that your business is all about. Be sure to include contact information. Many profiles on Pinterest and all other social channels lack a full description and/or profile photo. Some even use cute or silly phrases that do not give users useful information about the brand or their wares. For a global business or brand, this is not acceptable.
While cuteness may work on other social channels like Snapchat, it does not necessarily convey a brand’s messaging or motivate users to shop. Be sure that your business profile tells potential customers what your mission is, what they can expect to find, and how to buy.
You Do Have a Business Profile, Don’t you?
If your brand is set up with a personal account, changing to a business version is free and fairly easy. It only takes a few minutes if you know how to add some tags to your website. It is even easier if you are using WordPress. You will just need to verify your website address and ad a few more details to your settings. To learn how to convert your personal Pinterest account to a business profile, click here.
Be sure to use a clear profile image. Like other social platforms, Pinterest defaults to a generic silhouette if there is no profile image uploaded to replace it. This is a missed branding opportunity to show users a logo or product shot. Social media profile images should be uniform across all social channels for the purpose of consistency and branding. Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ use round profile images. Facebook users a square profile image. Be sure your profile image looks good and is recognizable as both round and square images
Increasing a brand’s following means more than just jumping on any other social channel, posting a bunch of random stuff, adding in some pins intended to sell your products, and hoping off until the next flurry of posting. Personal and business users both have to strategically work to build a following.
Increasing a following means engaging with the Pinners, asking them to follow your brand, and figuring out what content they find most interesting.
Ask followers from other social Profiles to follow your Pinterest account too. I am assuming your brand already has a following on another social platform and are looking to work at selling on Pinterest. Most businesses rightly begin with Facebook and then expand to other channels as they grow their business.
All Pinterest users can create or join group boards that share. The goal is to create a board where users save pins that represent a common interest save pins. There are even group boards set up solely for the purpose of gaining followers!
A brand can create a group board and invite relevant followers to contribute to the board. Be careful! Only create group boards if you have time to monitor the content for spam or other posts that might offend your followers! If your business has an affiliate or influencer program in place, consider creating a group board and restricting invitations to only them.
Remember you don’t have full control over a Pinterest group board them so if they get spammy or have some rather undesirable content, don’t let your brand to be associated with that. Be sure to monitor group boards and make sure it is and remains a good fit for your brand.
Since you have switched to a Pinterest business account already (you did do that, didn’t you?) you have access to Pinterest Analytics. Not quite as granular as Facebook Analytics and definitely not as robust as YouTube Analytics, Pinterest Analytics are still useful. Pinterest business users can see what days of the week were most popular for their accounts. There are third-party tools that offer more metrics!
https://analytics.pinterest.com/profile/
Post during popular periods to maximize the number of pins you put up at those times to get more eyeballs on your content. Saved Pins speed by in the crowded Pinterest feed. Test out a strategy during popular days, including Saturdays and Sunday – to see when content gets the most likes and comments. Weekends are a popular time for the do-it-yourself crowd as the hit the internet for inspiration and DIY tutorials. Lunchtime on weekdays (in local time) are popular times too.
The fundamental idea behind social media is that is supposed to be “social!” Talk to other Pinterest users by leaving comments on boards. This shows that you r are indeed human and participating rather than just posting images.
Participating on social media involves leaving comments on other users’ Pinterest Pins, inviting them to like you’re Pinterest boards, posting images and videos, or asking users for reviews, and feedback. As a brand, you probably will not follow many other users but rather, you are asking them to follow you. Make exceptions for those you do business with. Follow the boards or accounts of affiliates, influencers, retailers, wholesalers, or vendors. Be sure to ask them to follow back too.
Ask Pinners to follow you for promos and new products. Suggest similar products or services that they might be interested in.
We know the popular Pinterest topics are similar to those seen on Etsy. They are home décor, food & drink, fashion, weddings, and jewelry. DIY (do-it-yourself) projects and any kind of home makeover are common too. If those topics are not within your area of specialty then try to find a way to make these popular categories work for your brand.
Home Depot does a wonderful job of making themselves fit into the very popular categories on Pinterest. Obviously, they are a perfect fit for the DIY audience. Home Depot does better than that. They incorporate food and drinks into their Pinterest boards using them to highlight their grills, patio furniture, and garden products! It is a wonderfully effective Pinterest strategy for Home Depot. They make themselves fit into a category that otherwise would not work for them.
I have blog posts and YouTube Pinterest videos online to help you get started plus how to market your brand on Pinterest I tweet all of my blog post and videos on Twitter as well as save them to Pinterest; usually on my social media or Pinterest for Business boards. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more information about Pinterest strategy in video format.
